Mapmakers Wary on Crimea After Google Latin America Flap - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-14/mapmakers-wary-on-crimea-after-google-latin-america-flap.html
When dealing with territorial disputes, most U.S. mapping companies and commercial cartographers take their direction from the U.S. State Department, said Mark Monmonier, distinguished professor of geography at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
That doesn’t always keep mapmakers out of trouble.
A vote that could redraw the map of central Europe by joining Crimea to Russia has professional cartographers like Juan Valdes on high alert.
In the wake of a referendum scheduled for March 16, Valdes will likely convene a 10-person committee at the National Geographic Society in downtown Washington to determine how the region should be depicted on thousands of print and digital maps. Russia’s drive to annex Crimea, a region transferred to Ukraine by the Soviet Union in 1954, has drawn condemnation from the U.S. and Europe, which have threatened to impose sanctions if Moscow doesn’t back down. Today Russia warned that Ukraine’s government has lost control of the country, sparking concern the Kremlin may extend a military intervention.